Source: The Associated Press
On March 20, 2005 The Associated Press reported, "religious leaders from four faiths including the Rev. Jesse Jackson led an anti-war congregation in a service marking Palm Sunday and the second anniversary of the war in Iraq, calling for activists to take to the streets against the U.S. military presence there. The nearly three-hour service at the historic Riverside Church in Manhattan, where Martin Luther King Jr. once gave a sermon attacking the Vietnam War, was attended by hundreds of activists. Participants carried symbolic coffins draped with American flags and black cloths for Iraqi dead around the rows of pews in the neo-Gothic church's nave. Jackson and other speakers called for renewed protests, dismissing the Iraqi elections and signs of movement toward democratic reform in other Middle Eastern countries as no justification for war."